To transfer and store electronic computing data more efficiently, such data is often compressed into sizes smaller than their original sizes. Compressed data used in data transmission and storage typically includes variable-sized data units concatenated together. Fast conversion of this compressed data (e.g., unpacking of data bits) to an uncompressed, fixed-size data unit may be problematic, however.
For example, input data units may include 5 to 69 bits each, where the first 5 bits constitute a header which describes a format of a payload, and the next 0 bits to a maximum of 64 bits constitute the payload. Output data units may include unpacked, fixed-size data units of 64 bits each. Since variable-sized data units are concatenated together in the input data units, there is a sequential dependency between each of the input data units. That is, the first variable-sized data unit must be converted and size-determined before the second variable-sized data unit can be converted, the second variable-sized data unit must be converted and size-determined before the third variable-sized data unit can be converted, and so on.
In a particular example, three data units of 64 bits each, and of a total of 192 bits, in an uncompressed format, may include 27 bits in a compressed format and concatenated in the form of 5-bit, 11-bit, and 11-bit variable-sized data units, respectively. Uncompressing these three variable-sized data units with computing circuitry may be difficult since recognizing the bit boundaries of the variable-sized data units may require numerous, time-consuming tasks, e.g., first decoding the size of the first variable-sized data unit, then decoding the size of the second variable-sized data unit from the decoded size of the first variable-sized data unit, and so on. Further, each data unit conversion may require several clock cycles, thereby requiring many clock cycles to unpack the compressed data and making it unsuitable for high-speed electronic computation and communication.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.